Spherical speaker array provides blaring ball of sound

Granted, we've seen some oddities in our day when it comes to creating music makers, but the Spherical Speaker Array ranks pretty high up there in terms of sheer peculiarity. The overriding goal of this DIY project was to keep costs at a minimum regardless of quality, which means that the creator opted for speakers that would probably make even a casual audiophile weep. Nevertheless, taking a dremel tool to a number of IKEA bowls, wiring up a multitude of speakers, and finding an amplifier to power your new dangling ball of sound just about takes care of it. So if you're anxious to one-up the almighty 7.1-channel surround sound smartphone, or you just need a sufficient (and noisy) replacement to the dusty disco ball hanging in your pool hall, be sure to tag the links below to get to rockin' (but mostly rolling).

[Via HackNMod]

[(Unverified) Posted May 6th 2007 8:22AM]

Why do I get the feeling someone's going to adapt this for car use?

[(Unverified) Posted May 6th 2007 4:38PM]

I think I'll try this myself with much better speakers..

[Smart People Play Tuba Posted May 6th 2007 1:51PM]

Kinda reminds me of one of those floating things that shot laser bolts at Luke Skywalker's ass.

[RyeBrye Posted May 7th 2007 12:49AM]

Actually- it's not a spherical sound source. It's a ball with a bunch of speaker cones on it. This particular configuration is less effecient at approximating a spherical source of sound than a regular geometric configuration.

See: H. Smith, T. W. Leishman, “Numerical evaluation of the omnidirectional behavior of regular polyhedron loudspeakers,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 115, (5), p. 2525.